新加坡人是怎么说英语的

Do You Speak Singlish?
新加坡人是怎么说英语的

SINGAPORE — Is the government’s war on Singlish finally over? Our wacky, singsong creole may seem like the poor cousin to the island’s four official languages, but years of state efforts to quash it have only made it flourish. Now even politicians and officials are using it.

新加坡——政府对新加坡式英语发起的战争终于结束了吗？我们的这种古怪而抑扬顿挫的混合语，看上去可能像是岛上四种官方语言的穷亲戚，但官方数年的打压却让它兴盛了起来。如今，连政界人士和官员都在用新加坡式英语。

Trending at the moment is “ownself check ownself,” which was popularized by Pritam Singh, a member of Parliament from the opposition Workers’ Party. He was mocking the ruling People’s Action Party (P.A.P.) for saying that the government was clean and honest enough to act as its own guardian.

正流行的说法是“ownself check ownself”（自己查自己）。让它广泛流传起来的是反对党工人党(Workers’ Party)的议员毕丹星(Pritam Singh)。他借此嘲笑执政的人民行动党(People’s Action Party)的说法，即政府足够廉洁诚信，可以充当自己的监护人。

Singlish is a patchwork patois of Singapore’s state languages — English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil — as well as Hokkien, Cantonese, Bengali and a few other tongues. Its syntax is drawn partly from Chinese, partly from South Asian languages.

新加坡式英语是一种东拼西凑的方言，结合了新加坡官方语言英语、马来语、华语和泰米尔语，以及闽南语、粤语、孟加拉语和其他几种语言。其句法部分来自中文，部分来自南亚的语言。

“Steady poon pee pee,” from the Hokkien, means to be so poised as to deserve an admiring whistle. A snooty person is “yaya papaya”: with yaya perhaps originating from yang-yang (god of gods in ancient Malay) or jâjâ (father in old Javanese), and the “papaya” thrown in for the derisive rhyme. “Blur like sotong” means to be clueless: Sotong is Malay for squid.

“Steady poon pee pee”来自闽南语，意思是非常镇定，值得接受欢呼。“yaya papaya”是形容一个人骄傲自大，yaya可能源自yang-yang（古马来语中指众神之神）或jâjâ（古爪哇语中父亲的意思），加上 “papaya”（木瓜）是因为它押韵，并且有一种嘲讽的味道。“Blur like sotong”的意思是一无所知：Sotong是马来语中鱿鱼的意思。

Singlish is nimble, practical and dynamic — everyone who speaks it shapes it. Which may explain why, after emerging from obscurity half a century ago like an accidental byproduct of decolonisation, over the years it has become Singapore’s most political language.

新加坡式英语灵活、实用、多变，每一个使用者都可以影响它。这可能就是为什么它在半个世纪前还像个非殖民化副产品一样默默无闻，多年后却成了新加坡最具政治意味的语言。

During British colonial times, English was the language of administration, while street talk was carried out in pasar Malay, or market Malay. English continued to be the preferred means of instruction and governance even after the island became fully independent in 1965, partly because its global currency seemed to advance the young government’s modernization agenda.

在英国殖民统治时期，英语是官方语言，街头对话用的则是巴刹马来语。直到这个岛国1965年完全独立后，英语依然是传达命令和体现国家治理的首选语言，这部分是因为，英语作为全球通行语言这一点，似乎能推进这个年轻的政府的现代化议程。

All of Singapore’s citizens had to learn English, and also Malay, Mandarin or Tamil. In particular, the government took nation-building to mean harmonizing what was spoken by the ethnic Chinese, a majority of the population. From 1979, the authorities aggressively pursued the Speak Mandarin Campaign, requiring every ethnic Chinese to abandon other forms of Chinese, like Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and Hakka.

那时，所有新加坡公民都必须学英语，还有马来语、中文或泰米尔语。政府尤其认为国家建设意味着要统一人口占多数的华人的语言。从1979年开始，当局大力开展“讲华语运动”(Speak Mandarin Campaign)，要求所有华人放弃其他形式的汉语，如福建话、潮州话、粤语和客家话。

But the more the state pushed its purist bilingual policy, the more the territory’s languages met and mingled in Singlish. Through playful, day-to-day conversations, the unofficial composite quickly became a formidable cultural phenomenon. Sylvia Toh Paik Choo’s humor books celebrating Singlish in the 1980s — “Eh, Goondu!” (“Hey, Stupid!”) and “Lagi Goondu!” (“Even More Stupid!”) — were rare national bestsellers and the defining books of the era.

但政府越推行纯粹的双语政策，这里的语言越在新加坡式英语里相互融合。通过活泼有趣的日常对话，非正式的语言合成迅速成为一种力量强大的文化现象。在80年代，杜白秋(Sylvia Toh Paik Choo)出版了《嗨，笨蛋！》(Eh, Goondu!)和《还有更笨的！》(Lagi Goondu!)，颂扬新加坡式英语。它们语言幽默，是少有的畅销全国的著作，也是那个时代的典型作品。

The trend worried the government. State ministers, rather than re-examining pedagogy in schools, began blaming Singlish for declining English standards. The government also saw it as insular and inhospitable to foreigners, and therefore bad for business.

这种趋势令政府感到担忧。政府高官没有反思学校里的教学方法，而开始指责新加坡式英语拉低了英语的标准。政府还认为，对外国人来说，新加坡式英语显得狭隘，不友好，因此不利于商业。

In 1999, the country’s late great statesman Lee Kuan Yew declared Singlish “a handicap we must not wish on Singaporeans.” The next year, the government rolled out the Speak Good English Movement.

在1999年，已故政治伟人李光耀(Lee Kuan Yew)称新加坡式英语是“我们断然不希望新加坡人遇到的一个障碍”。第二年，政府推出了“讲正确英语运动”(Speak Good English Movement)。

Singlish, now an enemy of the state, went underground. But unlike the beleaguered Chinese dialects, it had a trump card: It could connect speakers across ethnic and socioeconomic divides like no other tongue could. And in the eyes of the young, continued criticism by the state made it the language of cool.

现在是政府敌人的新加坡式英语由此转入地下。但不同于腹背受敌的汉语方言，新加坡式英语有一张王牌：它可以连接不同族群、不同社会经济阶层的使用者，没有其他语言可以做到这一点。同时，在年轻人眼里，政府的持续抨击让这种语言变得很酷。

Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen’s “The Coxford Singlish Dictionary” was first published in 2002, and has sold over 30,000 copies. (“Coxford” is a portmanteau combining “talk cock,” Singlish for nonsense, and “Oxford.”) Singlish’s status grew so powerful that the Chinese dialects took refuge in it to re-seed themselves.

2002年，吴荣平(Colin Goh)和胡恩恩(Woo Yen Yen)合编的《胡说牛津新加坡式英语词典》(The Coxford Singlish Dictionary)第一次出版，已经售出了3万多本。（“Coxford”是新加坡式英语中表示胡说的“talk cock”和“Oxford”组成的混合词。）新加坡式英语的地位变得如此之高，以至于汉语方言都要借助它来重新传播。

The government’s war on Singlish was doomed from the start: Even state institutions and officials have nourished it, if inadvertently. The compulsory national service, which brings together male Singaporeans from all walks of life, has only underlined that Singlish is the natural lingua franca of the grunts. The tourism board can’t help but showcase it as one of Singapore’s few unique cultural creations.

政府对新加坡式英语发起的战争从一开始就注定会失败：连政府机构和官员都推动了它的发展，尽管是无心之举。让全国各行各业的男性聚在一起的义务兵役，也突显了新加坡式英语是大兵们本能选用的通用语。旅游委员会只能将其作为新加坡少有的几项独特的文化创造之一进行展示。

In his annual national address in 2006, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made a precious contribution to the lexicon. Hoping to one-up a podcast mocking the P.A.P. that involves an argument over whether a noodle dish contains pork liver — it’s a long story — Mr. Lee mentioned another popular noodle dish, mee siam, without cockles (“mee siam mai hum”). But mee siam never has cockles, and Mr. Lee’s blunder happily became Singlish for being out of touch.

在2006年发表一年一度的全国讲话时，新加坡总理李显龙(Lee Hsien Loong)为新加坡式英语的词汇做出了宝贵的贡献。在那之前，出现了一段嘲讽人民行动党的播客节目，涉及一场有关一道面食里有没有猪肝的争论。具体情况说来话长。讲话期间，希望压过那段节目的李显龙提到了另一道常见的面食，不加花蛤的米暹(mee siam mai hum)。但米暹向来就不加花蛤，于是，李显龙的这个错误顺理成章地成了新加坡式英语，意为不了解情况。

Singlish seems to thrive on codifying political resistance. To flip-flop on policy matters is to prata, after the South Indian pancake made by flipping dough on a hot plate, another favorite Singaporean dish. To politicize is to “politisai,” and classic Singlish, with its lazy end-consonant and dirty pun: “Sai” is vulgar slang for feces in Hokkien.

新加坡式英语似乎依靠把政治阻力演变成自己的词汇，取得蓬勃发展。指在政策问题上出尔反尔的prata，源自印度南部的飞饼。这是新加坡人最爱的另一道美食，制作过程中需在热锅上快速翻动面团。意指政治化的politisai是典型的新加坡式英语，结尾辅音是个懒音，有贬义的双关：“sai”是闽南语里的脏话，指粪便。

Finally grasping that this language is irrepressible, our leaders have begun to use it publicly in recent years, often in strategic attempts to connect with the masses.

终于意识到控制不住这种语言后，我们的领导人近年来开始公开使用新加坡式英语。这些通常都是试图拉近与民众距离的策略。

During a naturalization ceremony in 2012, as Mr. Lee was encouraging the new citizens to integrate, he conceded, “and if you can understand Singlish, so much the better.” (He should know.)

在2012年的一场入籍仪式上，李显龙在鼓励新公民融入新加坡时承认，“如果懂新加坡式英语，就更好了。”（这一点他最清楚。）

At a rally during last year’s campaign for the general election, the P.A.P. leader Teo Ser Luck promised voters a new bus station, afterschool care centers, facilities for the elderly and more. But only “when we are voted in, ah!,” he warned with a smile, because “LIU LIAN BO BAO JIAK!” No guarantee of durians to eat!

去年大选期间，人民行动党领袖张思乐(Teo Ser Luck)在一场集会上向选民承诺，将新建公交站、课外看护中心、面向老年人的设施等。但只有“我们当选才行啊！”他微笑着警告说，因为“LIU LIAN BO BAO JIAK”。不能保证有榴莲吃！